Vehicle operators tend to spend a significant amount of time in their respective vehicles particularly when commuting from a home to a workplace, running errands, conducting business, vacationing, or for many other reasons. Most vehicles tend to be intermittently operated and for various lengths of time and for various purposes. For example, passenger vehicles may be used for transportation from home and a workplace, between work sites, and along any number of different routes among different places. This time is significant enough that some vehicles come equipped with a variety of consumer electronics such as compact disc (CD) players, cassette tape players, radios, satellite radios, electronic gaming, and digital video disc (DVD) players. Some owners may also choose to equip their vehicle with aftermarket consumer electronics in the event their vehicles lack such consumer electronics or for purposes of customization. These and other entertainment or information resource electronic devices provide a passenger in the vehicle with time-occupying options and may improve the passenger's quality of travel.
Consumer electronics such as CD players, cassette tape players, DVD players, and electronic gaming generally have related media content for playback residing on a localized storage medium. For example, many onboard navigation systems utilize geographic information stored on CD's. This information may be downloaded to a memory associated with the navigation system, located in the vehicle, or directly accessed from the CD by the navigation system. In another example, DVD players commonly play media that is stored on a DVD.
Consumer electronics such as radios, satellite radios, and cellular phones generally have associated media content transmitted in real-time. For example, satellite radios receive audio broadcasts carried in a selected frequency band and play such broadcasts when the satellite radio is activated and tuned to a particular frequency. In general, these forms of consumer electronics use transmission methods that may have limited types of transmitted media and reception modes. In the past, the transmission of a large data file usually required a receiver to be dedicated to such transmission and activated for a substantially long and continuous period of time in order to download the data file using conventional transmission techniques. For example, using some transmission techniques, the receiver may be required to continuously and sequentially receive data transmission from a start header to an end header. Interruption of such reception generally results in an acquisition of data that may not be reassembled into the original data file. These requirements generally make transmission of large data files impractical for vehicle applications due to variable and intermittent operations, such as previously mentioned, commonly associated with vehicles.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a system and method for wireless transfer of multimedia data among vehicles. In addition, it is desirable to provide a multimedia system for a vehicle that is capable of exchanging multimedia data with other system vehicles during intermittent operation of the vehicle. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.